Sideways to Zero
by davidnm2007
Summary: Dr. Nassana T'Saith, a junior asari scientist, has hit a brick wall in her career. Frustrated and annoyed, she searches for options. However, her attempts to resolve the situation may just lead to discoveries no-one could ever have expected... (This is a speculative prequel, set a long time before the events of the main trilogy, using a group of non-cannonical characters.)
1. Chapter 1 A Failure of Funding

_**Author's note:**__ I think this needs a few quick words of introduction. Don't worry, I won't be long!_

'_Sideways to Zero' is a speculative prequel to the _Mass Effect _series. It concerns the discovery of the prothean beacon on Thessia, and the subsequent decisions and events surrounding that. I am not suggesting that the events of this story are what _did_ happen, but rather that they are one possibility regarding what _could_ have. In terms of dates, this story is set sometime around 600 BCE, in our terms, or thereabouts, but obviously no-one on ancient Thessia would be talking about BCEs or ADs or whatever!_

_Another significant conceit of this piece is that it tries to take the science background at least semi-seriously - because let's be honest, that slipped a bit in 3, didn't it? (With this in mind, I've taken a few bits of slight artistic license with the details of how Element Zero works/what it is, to try to make things a little more consistent with General Relativity.)_

_Finally, one last point, regarding units of measurement ... I don't imagine that ancient asari would be using kilograms, miles or whatever. However, thinking up a consistent alien units system would be a major task, and probably rather confusing to the reader. I have rendered the characters' discussion into the metric and imperial equivalents, in the places that seemed appropriate; they wouldn't actually be talking in joules and kilometres and pounds, anymore than they would actually be speaking English!_

_Anyway, without further ado, let's join our main character, Dr. Nassana T'Saith, as she struggles to navigate the murky political waters that surround science funding..._

_(Also, for some reason, the chapters drop-down box doesn't seem to be appearing on Ch. 1 here. I have no idea why; everything looks normal at the back-end! However, you can get to Ch. 2 via my profile page; click on the '' next to the Sideways to Zero link, and that should take you there. Hopefully this is just some glitch that will soon resolve itself...)_

* * *

'If you'd just let me speak, I'd _tell_ you what the point is!'

Dr. Nassana T'Saith - Nass to her friends - regarded the woman before her with frustration and perhaps a small amount of panic. The meeting was not going well.

Sat on the opposite side of the desk, Matriarch Reanne was sipping a strongly-scented cup of herbal tea. The fruity aroma filled the small space of her office. Behind her, mid-afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the long gallery-window. The graceful towers and spires of Armali were picked out against the bright Thessian sky.

The matriarch herself was a contrast with the beautiful view. She was a complacent, elderly woman with a figure that Nass had described to friends as 'dumpy'. Every time Nass had met with the woman, Nass had found it ever harder to hide her growing dislike. Reanne was short, loud and entirely convinced of her own self-worth; everything about her personality seemed tailored to grate against Nass's.

'I'm sorry, Dr T'Saith,' the matriarch said with little sincerity, 'but you're asking a lot. You want me to intervene with the City and ask the voters for money on your behalf - and for this! This pointless trainwreck of a proposal!' The woman waved a dismissive hand at the papers lying on the desk. Unable to help herself, Nass winced. The irritated matriarch continued, 'All you've done is gibber at me - all that jargon about resolutions and pixel scales and what was it! You've yet to show me what's new or interesting about this idea. Honestly - at least give me something I can work with here!' The matriarch shifted her weight; the chair underneath her creaked.

'Yes,' Nass said, trying to sound focused and earnest, 'this is a novel and unique proposed program of scientific research, which will bring much benefit-'

'A program of stamp-collecting, you mean,' Reanne said bluntly.

'A detailed and rigorous program of data-gathering which will fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the outer asteroids and greatly advantage our studies of planet formation-'

'But it won't greatly advantage the voters of Armali, will it?' Reanne said. She put the cup down on the desk. The porcelain clinked on the polished wooden surface. The remaining liquid sloshed inside the cup.

'Everyone benefits from science,' Nass said. 'I strongly believe that.' She was starting to feel angry with Reanne as well as angry with the situation. Nass was doing her best not to show her rising temper. She had a feeling her best just wasn't enough.

Her hands were balled at her sides, she realised. With a conscious effort, she relaxed the fingers.

'You want a stipend of seventy thousand credits,' Reanne said with a cold glint in her eye, 'to go and take photos of asteroids.'

'Not photos - it's all digital these days. It says all about the method, just there.' Nass waved a hand helplessly at the documents. As far as she could tell, Reanne hadn't even looked at them.

'How do you expect me,' Reanne said, 'to ask the people for money for glorified holiday snaps? And of worthless lumps of rock, as well. Think what else the money could be spent on. You haven't given me one convincing reason why I should waste any further time on you.'

Nass scowled. Her breath was hissing in and out in short, hard gasps. She briefly wondered if punching the patronising matriarch would really be such a bad thing.

'Well?' Reanne asked. 'Do you have anything else to say for yourself?'

Nass took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. She barely managed to ease her temper down a notch or so. However angry and insulted she might feel, shouting at a matriarch wouldn't do her any favours. She deliberately set aside her momentary fantasy of landing a fist right in the middle of Reanne's face.

'I see that you've made your choice,' Nass said. She spoke in a tight, tense voice, but she remained composed. Nass felt a moment of unexpected pride - given how twisted and tense she felt inside, not spouting obscenities was an achievement.

Reanne snorted. 'You've met with me five times, girl. And you haven't once managed to land a single blow. Now get out, before I laugh the blue off your arse. Oh, and stop lighting up like that. You just look silly.'

Nass looked down. There was a faint smell of ozone in her nostrils. A bluish biotic corona was creeping in fitful blotches over her body. To add to the day's humiliation, her unusually-weak biotic faculties had manifested themselves in their typical inadequate style! She managed to force the uneven crackling glow to subside.

There was an unwelcome hacking noise from the other side of the desk. Reanne was laughing, Nass realised.

Scowling, she grabbed up the sheath of papers and stuffed them under one arm. She strode out of the office without a further word or a backward glance. The soles of her shoes clicked sharply on the wooden floor.

As the door closed behind her, Nass took a moment to lean against the wall and close her eyes. She breathed deeply, trying to ease the sooth the storm of frustration and humiliation that was raging inside.

'Excuse me,' she heard a voice say, 'Dr. T'Saith? Do you need me to schedule a new appointment?'

Nass opened her eyes. The new speaker was Reanne's secretary. The woman was smartly-dressed and immaculately-groomed, and was sat behind another expensive-looking desk on the far side of the lobby. Her work-station was flanked by two thoroughly-manicured pot-plants, neither of which had so much as a single leaf or flower out of place.

'Thank you, Seata,' Nass said, 'but I don't think that's going to be necessary. I'll be going now. I dare say I shan't be back anytime soon.'

She walked quickly toward the elevator, trying not to run.

A short while later, Nass was outside, still clutching at her papers. She was stood on the pavement, in the shadow of Reanne's headquarters. The building was one of Armali's central towers, rising many floors into the sky. Its exterior was clad in well-polished glass and gleaming chrome, reflecting the sky and the cityscape around it. Nass couldn't help but think that it also reflected the arrogance of its builders. The tower was obviously worth considerably more than the mere seventy thousand or so that Nass needed. When it came to spending on the matriarch's own political movement, apparently cost wasn't an object. When it came to spending on anything else, it seemed things were different,

Nass hurriedly broke that chain of thought, lest it release a flood of rage.

Nass realised she had somehow managed to dislike the matriarch even more.

She sighed. Time to try and pull herself together and figure out a new strategy. With her free hand, she dug out her phone and called for a cab.

Ten minutes of taxi journey later and she arrived at the grounds of the University of Armali. The Faculty of Science was still her employer, at least for the next two months, and the Physics Department was still her workplace, at least for now. She walked through the campus grounds, trying not to think about how much extra job security that seventy thousand could have bought.

Feeling a need to distract herself, Nass surveyed her surroundings. She stopped walking by the side of one of the paths. She looked around her.

It was a bright, sunny afternoon. Parnitha was high in a sky marked only by a few thin cirrus clouds; overhead, birds circled and chirped. The air was moderately warm and in the University's gardens, the air smelt of flowers. Everywhere were people, scurrying to and fro and striding confidently from one place to another. In the middle distance, some undergraduates were sat chattering near the big ornamental fountain. Behind them, jets of water hissed and played through the air.

They all looked dreadfully young, she thought. None of them appeared to be so much as a day over thirty. Briefly, she wished she was that age again, back while her parents had still been alive and life had seemed simpler than it was now. The irony of the situation, she reluctantly had to note, was that asari like the matriarch would regard Nass herself as very young. After all, Nass was barely ninety-two.

Ninety-two, and her chosen career was already dead in the water.

'Better start working on my CV, then,' Nass said to herself, feeling bleak. 'It's not like I'll be here much longer, is it?'

As if to add the final insult, the weather was insisting on being lovely and sunny. Given how Nass felt, driving rain and a thunderstorm would be more appropriate. She allowed herself a quick glower in the direction of the sun - sadly, the brightness of the light turned her glower into more of an intemperate squint. She quickly looked away, blinking at the weirdly-coloured after-images. She felt briefly annoyed with herself - as an astronomer, she should know better than looking straight at the sun!

Nass shook her head and started walking again. She supposed this was all a sign that she needed to get moving. At least once she was inside her windowless office, she couldn't be annoyed any further by the nauseatingly-good weather.

A few moments later and Nass approached the Physics Building. It was a surprisingly-ugly concrete slab, all rectangles, sharp corners and narrow windows. Nass thought it looked like nothing so much as an above-ground nuclear bunker. Quite what the University's architectural team had been thinking, she had no idea. It was entirely out of sorts with the graceful arcs and curves of the other structures. The physics complex was also the furthest of the departmental buildings from the centre of the campus. It was almost as if the institution itself was trying to send a message that her activities weren't quite wanted.

Heels clicking on the smooth concrete, Nass entered the main lobby. Her plan was to go to the lab and have a look at the eezo samples. She didn't have any teaching scheduled for this afternoon, and there was some work she could do. Maybe if she could get just a bit more data with the existing set-up, then perhaps she could get enough data analysis done for a short article. That idea made Nass smile. Yes, that seemed like a plan. An extra publication would help a lot right now. It would give her more ammunition to argue for a contract renewal. It wouldn't be enough to get her a faculty position, but it might get her a few months' breathing-space. That would help.

Nass dared to allow herself to feel somewhat better. Perhaps today hadn't been quite the unmitigated disaster she'd feared!

'Nassana! There you are!'

Momentary happiness collapsed into sudden dread. That voice - it was the Professor Chianis, Head of the Physics Department.

Nass's boss.

Nass turned. Chianis had emerged from a side-corridor and was stood behind her, blocking the exit. 'It's good that I caught you,' Chianis said. 'Do you have a minute? We need to talk. About your renewal application. For your post-doctoral contract.' Her tone was mild but there was something predatory in the woman's eyes, like a hungry animal circling its chosen victim.

Nass's blood turned to ice in her veins. Dread filled her. She'd always had the vague feeling that Chianis didn't like her; that feeling intensified as she stood there. 'Okay,' she heard herself say. 'Perhaps in my lab? It should be quiet right now.'

Chianis nodded. 'Very well.'

Moments later, they were in the lab. It was a narrow space, the walls lined with benches covered in equipment. The walls were painted in a bland, institutional shade of beige. Pipes ran up the sides of the room and across the ceiling, part of the Physics Building's central heating system. A radiator chugged away to itself on the far wall. The room was filled with the steady hums of processor-fans and lit with an artificial, neon glare. There were no windows. Nass shared it with two other post-doctoral researchers; her lab-mates were both currently teaching classes.

The small space smelt of dust, ozone and chemical cleaning agents.

'What can I do for you?' Nass asked.

Like Reanne, Chiannis was another matriarch. She'd been at the University of Armali in various capacities for the last five hundred years. The woman's skin was a sun-weathered shade, more purple than blue, and her head-tendrils had a distinctly asymmetrical cast. Her eyes glittered coolly; she was known to look down on the department's younger members. She'd been at Armali since before there was a Physics Department - in fact, the woman had been here since before physics had existed as professional discipline. The woman was three hundred years older than Thessia's Industrial Revolution. Departmental rumour among the junior postdocs had it that she'd started out as an alchemist, only later switching to natural philosophy and then modern science as dubiously-effective magics had slowly drifted from intellectual fashion over the long centuries.

'Nassana,' Chianis said, 'this is difficult for me. I have a problem.'

Up overhead, one of the pipes groaned as an air-bubble worked its way through the building's heating system. Nass twitched, startled by the sound. She breathed deeply, trying to relax.

'There's a problem with my application?' Nass asked. She vaguely heard people walking outside, feet clicking on the concrete and muffled voices muttering at each other. The sounds of the outside leaked in through the half-open door behind Chianis.

'Well, more than that,' Chiannis said. 'It's your research impact metrics. I want to keep you, really I do. But we're just not getting enough papers out of you. Last year the department averaged three point seven papers per staff-member - in full peer-reviewed journals, I mean! We're not counting popular-press stuff and online citations. But you - well, there was only the one.'

'I have two more,' Nass said, waving a hand at her processor. The computer displayed a shifting, fractal pattern as its screensaver.

'But where are they?' Chiannis asked. Over on the far wall, the radiator _glug_ged to itself.

'They're being written at the moment,' Nass said.

'How written is written?'

'Uh - well, I'm having a lot of discussions with the co-authors,' Nass said, wringing her hands. She felt cornered, awkward. This was a topic she wanted to stay away from. 'There are some, uh, issues. You know. Just stuff we need to talk over.'

'Well,' Chiannis said, 'you might want to talk quickly. I've got fifteen applicants for the three-month position, and twelve of them have more papers than you.'

Nass winced. It was the papers, ultimately, that attracted the funding. The University had its network of matriarchs, some of them staff, some of them alumni, some of them just interested amateurs. When the City of Armali held its open parliaments, it was the allied matriarchs who went before the voters to argue for funds, all of the various departments competing for public largesse. One of the pieces of evidence the matriarchs used in their speeches and debates were the papers produced by the academic staff. _Look at all the exciting things my friends are doing!_ they would say. _See all the new knowledge we are compiling!_

That was basic, cold equation of academia; no papers equalled no money.

In the last few centuries, as Thessia blinked confusedly into the Steam Age, and then the Electric Age, and now the Processor Age, science had become a bit fashionable. Lots of eager, bright young things wanted to make their mark, still full of energy and enthusiasm. A lot of people wanted Nass's job; she was not indispensable, and she knew it. It was the ages-old problem of supply and demand; too many eager and desperate young researchers, eagerly and desperately chasing too few jobs.

Now if only she could have landed that independent grant...

'I'm working on it,' she said to Chiannis. 'Really I am. I just need more time.' Up above, the pipes groaned again. The radiator clicked and pinged, almost as if the building itself wanted to note its disapproval of her parlous publication history.

What Nass needed was calmer and more agreeable co-authors. She was using data from several proprietary sources; consequently, she either had to have the data's eminent discoverers as co-authors or risk getting them as reviewers for the papers. Nass had figured it was better to have the eminences 'in the tent, peeing out', as she'd put it, 'rather than outside, peeing in'. But the grand old asari of science did so love to argue, and arguing they were - it had been going on for weeks, ever-more-minute debates about naming conventions and acronyms and all the other philosophical arcana beloved of academics. The two papers had been held back by all this for months. Nass was the first author, true, but she was also by far the most junior researcher on either author-list. She knew she had to tread carefully - the last thing Nass wanted was a political fight with one of the grand old women.

It was one of the paradoxes of academia; being first author on a paper could give one surprisingly little power over its development.

Talking of a lack of power, apparently Chianis wasn't done with Nass yet.

'There is one more difficulty,' the woman said. Her voice was diffident but her eyes were cool and challenging. Outside the room, someone walked past, their shoes squeaking and clicking on the concrete floor. Nass took a deep breath to steady herself, inhaling the lab's faint aroma of ozone and chemicals.

Chianis was regarding her closely. Nass twitched, feeling oddly naked under that gaze. 'That would be?' she asked.

'You've been trying to get grants,' Chianis said. 'For your hybrid project.' A disdainful light glinted in her eyes.

As an academic who pre-dated the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, Chianis was an arch-traditionalist. One thing the traditionalists did not like were cross-disciplinary projects. Such works messed with their sense of categories and their notions of proper boundaries. To traditionalists, categories and boundaries were key markers of intellectual tradition, and to them, tradition was everything.

Sadly for her, Nass's specialism was highly interdisciplinary.

'We're supposed to seek supplementary funding,' Nass said, sounding defensive even to her own ears. 'And my idea of looking for Element Zero amongst the asteroids - it has both astronomy and particle physics implications. The project has to be cross-disciplinary; that's in its nature. Thessia's eezo had to come from somewhere, and the outer planetessimals seem as likely a place as any.'

'Yes, and it's good of you to look for the money,' Chianis said. Nass noted that the Head of Department had nothing to say about the science itself. Chianis continued, 'I understand you've visited all of the science-inclined independent matriarchs now. All of them, in Armali. And all of them have refused you.'

Nass blinked. She blurted, 'You already know? But I only just got back from Reanne's place!'

'You admit it, then,' Chianis said, affecting a sad look. 'The point is, Nassana, you're getting known. And not in the good way. People know your face, and they're starting to link it to us. That could have implications for our reputation. Combine that and the lack of papers?' Chianis shrugged, smiling apologetically. 'You can see how awkward it is for us, Nassana. Our city is a democracy; the reputation of public bodies is very important. We are a public body, of course. I'm sure you understand the difficulties.'

Nass had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Her earlier burst of optimism was fading away. It seemed she had been appointed the designated victim for the latest outburst of departmental politics. She wondered when Chianis had last had the opportunity to end some other young interdisciplinary upstart's career; thinking about it, it had been nearly half a year since the last round of contract terminations.

The pipes along the ceiling creaked and moaned as a bubble of air worked its way through the heating system. Startled, Nass twitched.

'I wanted to talk about this with you in person,' Chianis said. 'I didn't want you to think anything was happening behind your back.' With that, she turned and swept out of the lab. Her shoes made a sharp _clack-clack-clack_ sound on the floor.

Nass watched the woman go, feeling despondent. That was the thing about academia - some people would knife you in the back, but they weren't the worst. No, the worst were the people who'd put the knife in your face. They'd knife you, and have such a nice, understanding smile while they did it. They'd tell you it was for the greater good and urge you to understand and smile sadly whilst they drove the blade in, but they'd keep going until only the hilt was sticking out from between your shocked eyes.

The sound of Chianis's shoes faded into the distance, blending into the background hum of the building.

Feeling bleak, Nass subsided into the chair before her computer. The bearings squeaked as she settled down. She rested her head in her hands.

The radiator _glugg_ed loudly.

Nass glared at it. 'You can bloody well shut up, too!' she snapped. She was tempted to get up, storm over and give it a kick. Then she felt a burst of embarrassment - taking out her frustrations on the appliances! Honestly! As if the machines were listening. She shook her head and sighed.

There was a knock at the door. 'Uh. Dr. T'Saith?' said a familiar and slightly timid voice. 'Are you ... uh, free?'

Nass had to stifle a groan. Of course she had a meeting scheduled today! In the drama of the day's events, it had entirely slipped her mind.

'Come in, Kia,' Nass said. 'I'm not doing anything right now.'

The door creaked fully-open and another, younger asari entered. Kiara Lexian - Kia for short - was one of the department's graduate students. She was doing a thesis on spectroscopy of asteroids and was partly-supervised by Nass. Nass wasn't Kia's main supervisor, but Kia appeared to prefer talking to her. From the young postdoc's point of view it was baffling - why would anyone want to talk to her? - but Kia seemed to get something out of their regular exchanges.

As always Kia was dressed unusually-smartly for a science postgraduate. She favoured surprisingly-expensive looking shoes and smart suits. Nass had never known any other graduate student who regularly turned up to the lab in a suit, but it seemed to work for Kia.

'Have a seat,' Nass said, waving a hand at one of the free chairs.

'Thanks.' The student settled herself into the chair. It creaked noisily. Kia winced. 'That didn't sound good.'

'I gather the budget doesn't stretch to new chairs,' Nass said drily. 'Let's face it, it barely stretches to paying the existing staff.'

An astute look crossed Kia's face. 'I passed Chianis on the way here,' she said. 'The professor looked - well, she looked smug.'

Chianis wasn't particularly well-liked within the department; her abrasive and confrontational manner had made her few friends. Sadly, no-one else was in a position to do anything about her. Nass had once heard a somewhat-drunk and somewhat-bitter colleague compare Chianis to bathroom mould; She'd said, "No-one much likes it, but once it's set in, there's basically no getting rid of it." It was an unflattering comparison, but Nass could understand the sentiment.

'We had a run-in,' Nass said guardedly.

'If you need some help,' Kia said, 'just ask. I mean, seriously.'

Rumour had it that Kia's family were old money. Certainly there was something in Kia's manner that suggested a wealthy background. She dressed unusually-smartly and where most of the other postgraduates lived in small shared flats in the cheap commuter-towns around Armali, Kia lived in a two-bedroom apartment right in the middle of the city itself. Nass had been there once, to a dinner party; the property actually had a view straight out over the river! There was no way that Kia's stipend alone could be paying for it. Even most of the staff lived outside of the central districts of Armali.

Then there were also these odd remarks Kia dropped every now and then, which seemed to imply that she thought she had some sort of influence. Nass had wondered about that a few times, but she supposed that at the end of the day, Kia's family and their circumstances really weren't any of her business.

'That's nice of you,' Nass said, 'but unless you can lay your hands on the fat end of a hundred kilocredits - no forget I even said that! My problem, not yours.' She ran her hands over her head, poking at her head-tendrils.

Kia looked at her with a speculative expression, but said nothing. Over in the corner, the radiator glugged.

'So,' Nass said, 'what can I do for you today?'

'Oh, the usual.' Kia produced a sheathe of paper; she'd had them tucked under one arm. 'I've got a new draft of my article, but I could do with having someone look over it.'

'I'm always happy to help,' Nass said, 'but have you heard anything from Delana?' Dr. Delana T'Koris was Kia's principal supervisor.

'No,' Kia said. 'She's still on holiday. And she said she wouldn't have any e-mail access till she got back.'

Nass blinked. Of course. Holidays. Those things that normal people went on, didn't they? Idly, she wondered when the last time she'd been on holiday had been. She had a feeling it had been a while ago. Possibly a few years. There'd been a few snatched days here and there, of course, but no actual, proper leave-and-go-elsewhere break. Nass would like a trip away, but damn it, she was just too busy!

Nass took the sheathe of papers. 'I'll do what I can,' she said. The front page declared, in prominent letters, SPECTROSCOPY AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF METALLIC MAIN-BELT ASTEROIDS. Beneath it was an abstract, a central block of text dominating the page, and below that it switched to a two-column format for the introduction. The black text swam in Nass's eyes, dark shapes bold against the white background, like figures seen blurrily in a snowstorm.

'Dr. T'Saith? Are you okay?'

Kia was looking at her, seeming concerned.

'Oh, sorry,' Nass said. 'I've had a bit of a - you know, a rough day. I think I tuned out for a moment there.'

Kia looked to one side. 'Oh,' she said. 'All that hard work on the eezo again. You must be very tired.' Apparent understanding blossomed on her face. 'I see the clampstand's fallen over again.'

'What - oh, fuck! Not a-fucking-gain!'

Kia's gaze led Nass's eyes to the apparatus on her desk. She stared at it, aghast.

The 'apparatus', as Nass called it, was a scientific device she'd built herself. The thing sat on the workbench next to her computer. The apparatus was the fifteenth iteration of the design. The first eight had suffered various electrical faults; two of them had actually caught fire. Number nine had literally fallen apart, due to a dodgy batch of solder. Number ten had been thrown out by an overzealous cleaner. Numbers eleven through fourteen had succumbed to various fatal errors in their programming.

'That seems to keep happening,' Kia observed.

'I know,' Nass groaned. 'Sorry - I'll have to attend to this.'

With a loud creak from the chair and a protesting groan from its casters, Nass stood up. She walked over to the apparatus and prepared to try and sort it out.

The apparatus was an odd-looking thing. It had a thick, rectangular base-section. Cables and wires snaked out of the base section, connecting it both to Nass's computer and to a couple of the surrounding instruments. On top of the base section was an electromagnetic induction plate. Another one was supposed to be held in place some ten inches above the first, anchored to a clampstand. Between them was the belljar and its contents.

Today the clampstand was lying on its side, several inches back from the apparatus. The electromagnetic plate was stuck up in the air, like a fat metal digit suffering from rigor mortis.

'Oh well,' Nass said as she picked up the clampstand, 'at least this time it didn't crack the glass on the way down. So I don't need to worry about replacing the belljar. Or getting the air pumped out of it again.'

The belljar was supposed to contain a high vacuum, so as to minimise contamination for its actual contents. When it was fully-evacuated, the pressure inside the jar was about three hundred-thousandths of Thessia's usually surface air pressure. Those remaining three hundred-thousandths annoyed Nass no end, as but her budget didn't stretch to better pumps, she knew she was stuck with them.

'Mind you,' she heard Kia say, 'the eezo looks pretty today.'

'Well I'm glad someone else thinks it's interesting,' Nass muttered. However cynical she might be feeling today, she had to acknowledge that Kia had a point. The belljar contained a sort of swirling, bluish-white pseudo-mist. It writhed and coiled in a manner that looked almost alive, an animate smoke. The swirls were visibly-brighter and visibly-more active toward the bottom of the belljar. Nass added, 'It's being unevenly stimulated, you know, with the other clampstand knocked over.'

The eezo's light was strangely hypnotic. It was like watching sunlight underwater, always shifting and changing. Whenever Nass was near it, she could always feel a faint, electric tension, sort of like what she felt when someone else's biotics were alight.

Carefully, Nass replaced the clampstand. 'I think it keeps getting knocked over,' she said, 'you know, by peoples' elbows and stuff. No-one will admit it, but stands don't just move by themselves, do they?'

'Your lab-mates are probably just too embarrassed by their clumsiness,' Kia agreed. Over on the far wall, the radiator made a _glugg_ing noise. Nass shot it an irritated glance.

With the stand replaced, she checked the other stand. This one held a small spectrograph, pointed at the eezo sample in the belljar. That was the point of keeping the eezo in its electromagnetically-excited state; in that condition it would emit light, allowing Nass to map its spectrum. Or at least, that was the idea. With the regular clampstand problems, Nass was having trouble getting decent data out of it. She really needed to leave the apparatus running for a couple of days to gather enough signal, but during that time someone would inevitably disturb the apparatus. The best run she had so far before a clampstand collapse was only seven or so hours.

'Actually,' she said, 'I suspect it might be the cleaners, not my lab-mates. But getting them to confess to anything is basically impossible.'

'How's the data coming on?' Kia asked.

Nass shook her head. 'Honestly? Not so well. I don't have anything like what I need to calibrate actual observations. I mean, if I took an ice-planetessimal spectrum right now, I'd be able to recognise if there were eezo features in that spectrum - but I wouldn't be able to tell you how much there was, or whether it was excited or dormant! And if I put in a telescope proposal with that sort of vagueness, well, the time allocation committee would just laugh me out of town. Particularly for the big telescopes.'

'Do you really need a big telescope?' Kia asked. 'I mean, I'm doing my work a one-metre mirror telescope, and that's asteroids too, and I'm getting useful data.'

'Yes but you're working on the inner asteroid belt,' Nass pointed out. 'That's a lot closer to Parnitha, so there's more light for the rocks to reflect. I'm looking at the stuff beyond the orbit of Tevura. You know, twenty-six times Thessia's orbital radius and counting! There's not an awful lot of sunlight out there - it's dark and cold! That's kind of the whole point - the ice-planetessimals are the actual leftovers from the planet-formation process, and because it's dark and cold out there, they're basically still in their original form.'

'So if there is eezo anywhere else in our solar system, that's where you'd find it,' Kia agreed. 'I see your point.'

'But of course it's dark out there, so there's fuck-all light for them to reflect. So I really do need a telescope with a big mirror-diameter. I actually can't get by on a smaller one at all!'

Kia nodded. 'Because a telescope is a bucket for photons. Like putting out a bucket for rain, if you want to catch more photons, you need a bigger bucket.'

'And I need all the photons I can get,' Nass said. Someone walked past in the corridor outside, shoes clicking on the floor and echoing a little in the confined space. The sound faded as whoever it was walked away into the distance.

Nass didn't say it, but there was another problem: money. Research-class instruments with mirror-diameters large enough for her needs did exist, but there weren't many of them. Those that did exist were all horribly over-subscribed with other bright young asari scientists brimming with bright young ideas. Research-class telescopes needed a lot of maintenance and a lot of specialist technical support, none of which came cheap. Most cities didn't have a dedicated science budget; instead, their researchers got by on the inconstant stream of crumbs that the public might be willing to provide. Consequently, anyone seeking observing time on a research-class instrument also needed to have a budget in place to cover the costs of their work.

After today's events, Nass had run out of options for finding that budget.

'It sounds really difficult,' Kia said, looking doubtful. 'I mean, are you sure it would even work?'

Nass nodded. 'Oh yes. I've done all the feasibility stuff. And got it all double-checked with the collaborators.' She meant the co-authors on her draft papers. That at least had given her some hope. If even the ultra-argumentative grand old asari of science agreed that something was doable, at least in principle, then that meant it probably was. 'You know, we looked at all the relevant stuff. Spectral resolutions. Signal-to-noise ratios. Exposure times. Data-analysis pathways. If I could just get the fucking data, I could do the fucking work!'

Kia was peering at the belljar again. 'Do we even know what it is?' she asked. 'Element zero, I mean?'

Nass shook her head. 'Not really, no. The name's a bit of a misnomer - it doesn't seem to have internal structure, at least not like normal matter. There don't seem to be eezo atoms or eezo molecules. Rather it's almost like a sort of continuous fluid of mass-energy, denser in some places than others, but without any little solid nodules or anything like that. Stick it under a microscope and all you see is that ghostly glow, no matter what magnification you look at it with. I've heard some people say it's a bit like a sort of quantum condensate, but the problem with that idea is condensates are usually only stable within a few degrees of Absolute Zero.' She waved a hand at the belljar. 'This stuff is apparently quite happy at room temperature, and even higher.'

'They find it in ores, don't they?' Kia said.

Nass nodded. 'Eezo is electrically-active, somehow. It can hold a charge, even though it doesn't seem to have electrons or protons. Because it's electrically-active, it can bind itself to conductive materials. Like metal veins, in the planet's crust.'

'I heard something in the news a couple of years ago, about them finding it in people too.'

'And plants and animals,' Nass said. 'But yes. It's no surprise it's in us too, I suppose. I mean, it's present in the soil and the water and even in the air, in trace amounts. It's everywhere on Thessia, basically. So it's no surprise that it found its way into the body, I guess. They got excited a couple of years ago after they isolated it within the nervous system. There was a suggestion it might be something to do with our biotics.' Nass shrugged. 'It's possible, I suppose. Certainly if you light up, the sample over there tends to go a bit nuts.'

She should have realised Kia would take that as a hint. A bright bluish corona, much stronger than any of Nass's, suddenly blazed into life around Kia's body. Visibly concentrating, Kia made the glow pulse in intensity. Inside its belljar, the eezo started a matching oscillation, surging and fading in brightness.

Kia killed her glow. The eezo settled down. 'Well,' Kia said, 'that was quite something to see.'

Nass nodded. 'You see it a lot more with this sample. It's because of the purity. And its isolation from the air. Raw eezo, out there in nature, is a lot more sluggish. Probably because of all the boring-matter atoms it's tangled up with.'

Kia laughed. ' "Boring-matter". I like that!' She snorted. 'Are you ever tempted to, you know, just sit there and pulse at it?'

Nass shook her head. 'There's no point. My biotics are pretty feeble. I can just about light myself up, but that's it.' Privately, she had to admit that it was probably just as well. If she'd been one of those rare strong ones, there'd have been a risk that she would have Thrown Matriarch Reanne out of her window earlier.

'I can move things,' Kia said. 'Small ones, anyway. As long as they're within a few feet of where I'm sat. You know, glasses, plates, cutlery, that sort of thing.'

'You're lucky,' Nass said. 'My triumph in biotics class at school was the day I managed to shift a penny! It went nearly three inches. And by the Goddess, I had a rotter of a headache afterwards. I've never tried that again.'

Kia looked speculative. 'If there were some way to, you know, amplify our biotics. Feed them extra power, from an external force, focus the fields for finer control...'

Nass nodded. 'I've heard that idea, yes. That's partly why they were so briefly excited over eezo a couple of years ago. The Serrice team had an idea that maybe you could use eezo to do exactly that. Sadly, it didn't work. I gather their - what did they call it? an amp? - their amp exploded, and gave the testee some very nasty burns. Put the poor woman in hospital and everything. There was dark talk about health and safety and liabilities and people getting sued. I don't think anyone actually was in the end, but all that fuss...' She shook her head. 'It really put people off doing eezo research, basically.'

'That's a shame,' Kia said. 'Well, I think it's really interesting!'

Nass nodded. 'I'm glad someone else does. Particularly since it seems to be hinting that something's badly wrong with our current models of planet formation. I mean, Thessia is basically dripping with eezo - but not anywhere else. None of the other planets in our solar system show eezo features in their spectra. Space probes haven't found any in their crusts. Meteorites don't seem to contain any eezo. And there's no sign of it in the sun, either! If fucking Parnitha doesn't have any eezo, then what's it doing in one of her planets?'

Kia nodded and reached out to tap the top sheet of her printed paper draft. 'I'm not seeing any evidence of it in the main-belt asteroids,' she said.

'It's possible it might have evaporated off,' Nass said. 'They have no magnetospheres and no air. There's nothing between their surfaces and the solar wind.'

'Nor do the icy planetessimals,' Kia pointed out.

'True, but they're so much further from the sun. Dark and cold, remember? The solar wind is a lot weaker out there. We don't think their composition has changed much since the formation of the solar system. They're basically time-capsules from the proto-stellar nebula, coming down to us pristine after four and a half million lifetimes. It's quite staggering when you think about it.'

'If there is any other eezo anywhere,' Kia said, 'that's where you'll find it.'

'If I can somehow get a budget in place and get enough time on a telescope,' Nass said. The radiator made one of its noises again. Nass sighed. 'If. And it's looking unlikely at the moment. But anyway, this is getting away from the point, isn't it? Let's have a look at your paper...'


	2. Chapter 2 Setting The World To Rights

After she finished talking to Kia, Nass attempted to return to her own work for a while. She had a look in on the progress of the discussion in her inbox. It emerged that the grand old women of science had fallen into another dispute over naming conventions on one of the papers, and on the other they were arguing over who should go where on the author list. None of it resembled productive or helpful discussion. Nass tried to intervene to soothe the ruffled feathers, but she got little in the way of positive response. After a while, she had to concede that she was getting nothing useful done.

She had no classes to take today and no-one else to meet, so she decided to go home early. She supposed mordantly that it wasn't like abandoning her work could make her situation any _worse_ right now. She gave the eezo belljar one last half-fascinated, half-frustrated look, then she retrieved her jacket and her bag.

She shot the noisy radiator a final glare on the way out as she left the lab.

A brisk walk across town brought her to the train station. A few minutes later, she was on board the 16:21 monorail to Sereandris. At this time of day, the train was still relatively free of crowds. The main source of ambient noise was the quiet hum of the electromagnets beneath her feet, rising and falling as their shifting fields pushed the train forward. She could feel it as well, through her feet. If nothing else, the gentle hum made a change from the glugging of the radiator in her office.

Nass found herself sat at a vacant table beside a window, watching the countryside sail past. The Armali to Sereandris line ran along the coast; the view out to sea was beautiful. Waves, shoreline and sky swept past and Nass barely noticed any of them. She was lost in her own concerns. Her frustrated dreams of eezo weighed heavily on her mind. Beside those, the scenic wonders of sea and sand seemed to be of little consequence.

She had some time for her broodings. The journey to Sereandris took about thirty minutes. The monorail was fast but Sereandris was located at the far western end of the chunk of land that lay under the aegis of the City-Republic of Armali. Sereandris was one of the city's many outlying commuter towns, populated by a mix of genuine locals and also by people who couldn't quite afford the glittering lights of the central city.

Nass was in the awkward situation of having a foot in both camps.

She tried to distract herself by having a browse of the day's news, on her phone. It was largely as she'd expected. The so-called 'votes for vegetables' agricultural land-sales scandal had claimed yet another head over in Thrinaiga; another senior matriarch had been forced to resign from the city's Board of Trade after being linked to the corrupted land-auctions. In Serrice, the electorate had decided against the annual budget-recommendations made by the city's civil service; various talking heads on various media-sites were blathering about what exactly this might or might not mean. Elsewhere, an overpaid non-entity from the world of sport had announced their retirement; Nass immediately tapped through to the next page without even looking at the article itself. Sports and sporting celebrities were topics of zero interest for her. The new page revealed that the Church of Athame had put out a statement decrying the 'moral bankruptcy of modern lifestyles' and exhorting the asari to 're-connect with their faith'. Nass sighed in exasperation when she read that one - this was news how exactly?

There was only one story that she found even slightly interesting or distracting. There was an article about proposals to send a crewed interplanetary spacecraft to Lucen; the governments of the Big Six city-republics had all agreed to back the plan, the report said, and supposedly there was even an allocated budget. Nass was intrigued to see that the story had apparently found its way into the mainstream press. Ideas and plans had been bouncing backward and forward across various scientific mailing lists and discussion-groups for several years now, but it looked like the plans were rather more advanced than she'd realised. Nass supposed this would be particularly interesting for Kia, given that her work related to the main-belt asteroids. Whenever the expedition to the largest of the main-belt rocks would actually get under way, Kia would could a reasonable chance of getting a consultancy position on one of the Thessia-side support teams.

Well, it was nice to know that _someone_ in science had a hope of a job.

That was a depressing thought, and it brought Nass's own situation crashing back into her mind. She grimaced in frustration. It appeared that even the news was providing no real distraction. She closed the browser tab and put her phone away, back into its pocket in her jacket. She glanced up at the time and location display near the door of the train carriage; well, there at least was some good news! The monorail was due into Sereandris in just a few minutes.

Even as she looked at the display, she felt the change in pitch of the thrumming from beneath. The carriage's electromagnets had gone into deceleration-mode. Sure enough, she felt it, a gentle pressure pushing her back into her seat as the carriage slowed.

As soon as the monorail slid into its berth at the town's main station, she was stood inside the carriage's doors. She tapped her left foot impatiently as she awaited their opening. Once they parted, she sprang out and was off down the platform as quickly as she could. Nass felt a need to be home as soon as possible. Today had been a dreadful day and there was a need to take refuge in the quiet and the security of her house.

Nass lived about five minutes' walk away from the station. Her dwelling was a single-storey house, located on a low cliff that directly overlooked the sea. Her colleagues at work thought she was rather fortunate to own the property, as own it outright she did. For her part, Nass knew better. While there was some fortune associated with the house in which she resided, that fortune had exacted its own price many years before, and would continue to exact that price for centuries to come.

She loved the house, but she'd also loved her parents. She would have traded in the house at a moment's notice to get them back.

Still, for all of its resonances of the past, the house did afford her a certain peace. Once she got home, Nass made her way to the kitchen. She brewed herself a pot of a local tea and then she took it out to the balcony at the back of the house. She seated herself in one of the recliners there and leaned back, intending to spend a couple of hours watching Parnitha set.

Some way below her, she could hear the waves, hissing and grumbling as they lapped at the cliff-face. Overheard, some birds were circling. She could hear their cries. The afternoon was still warm but the wind that touched her face was cool, scented with sea-spray. On either side of the balcony the bay curved away. On one side of her was the waterfront districts of Sereandris, hotels, shops, houses and the esplanade running off into the distance. On the other side, the houses petered out and gave way to low, rolling hills and grassy fields. The view was one of the best things about this house.

Her parents, she remembered, had used to take her out to this balcony for dinners during summer, back when she was a little girl.

Beside her, sat on the little table next to her, the tea-pot steamed. Nass sipped delicately from a small cup, enjoying the herbal taste of the tea. For a few moments, she almost managed to feel content.

Almost.

The relative peace was never going to last. It was spoiled within a few minutes when a sound echoed through the open door behind her. Irritated, Nass frowned. Down at the far end of the main corridor, someone was banging on her front door.

'Goddess,' she muttered. 'Do I even get a moment's break?'

Grumbling, she put the tea cup down and stood up. The recliner's frame groaned as she withdrew her weight.

She walked indoors and made her way to the front door, fully intending to tell whoever it was to take a long hike off a short pier. She reached the door, drew back the bolt and pulled it open -

She was confronted by a bottle of wine, waved vigorously in front of her face.

'Look - alcohol!' a very familiar voice said brightly. 'It's okay, I've brought booze! You can let me in now!'

Nass blinked, momentarily pulled up short. 'I - uh - Ryn? What are you doing here?'

Her eyes managed to focus on the asari who was holding the unexpected bottle. The woman was an inch or so taller than Nass. The newcomer was dressed somewhat scruffily, in working boots, dusty pants and a plain t-shirt. She had bright eyes and her skin-tone was rather more turquoise than Nass's.

Nass, of course, knew her bottle-brandishing visitor very well. It was Dr. Seryna T'resh, Ryn to her friends, a sometime fellow undergraduate of Nass's entrance-year and currently a junior member of the Department of Archaeology at Armali University.

'Ryn?' Nass repeated herself. 'What are you doing here?'

'Waving a bottle of an Amathea '68 at you, that's what! Seriously, it's freezing out here - are you going to just stand there looking gobsmacked? Or can I come in now?'

'Ryn, it's late summer. The only thing that's freezing at the moment is my career!'

Complain as she did, Nass stood aside. Ryn breezed cheerfully through the open door. 'I'll just dump my boots over here!' she announced as she walked in. 'Wouldn't want to track my dust all over your lovely hardboard floors!'

Nass sighed. 'Okay, whatever. I'll be on the balcony. Come and find me whenever you're ready.' She pushed the door shut. It clicked firmly into place.

'Don't worry,' Ryn said brightly, 'I'll get the glasses! I know where you keep them.'

'Do you now,' Nass muttered. Then she turned around and stalked off back down the corridor.

Shortly after, Nass was ensconced once more on top of her chair on the balcony. She was just settling herself when Ryn reappeared, shoeless and bearing two wineglasses and the '68 Amathean red. 'I've dealt with the cork already,' Ryn said, depositing the unexpected alcohol and accoutrements on the table.

'That was good of you,' Nass observed.

'Oh I'm ever so thoughtful!' With the skill of long practise, Ryn plucked up the bottle and started pouring. Red wine tumbled and splashed into the glasses. Once she was done, Ryn moved one of the glasses toward Nass. She took the other up herself.

Ryn took a deep sip. 'Goddess, but that's good!' Then she burped.

Nass winced. 'Ryn, have I ever told you you're a bit crass?'

'Only six or seven times a day,' Ryn said artlessly, 'but don't worry, you won't change me!'

'Oh I gave up on that long ago, believe me,' Nass said, rolling her eyes. There was another recliner out on the balcony. Nass waved a hand at it. 'Oh come on, sit down.'

'Thanks.' With a surprisingly demure motion, Ryn settled herself neatly onto the other recliner.

Nass reached for the glass. She sniffed it then took a sip. The '68 was rather good, she had to admit. Well, maybe a glass or two was exactly what she needed tonight.

'So, Ryn,' she ventured, 'it is good to see you - but really, why are you here?'

'Well,' Ryn said, 'aside from being your angel of alcohol, I figured you could do with some company.' Her manner became serious. It was a rapid transition. Nass never had got entirely used to Ryn's mercurial shifts of mood. Ryn said, 'I heard about today.'

'Oh Goddess,' Nass groaned. 'You and half of Thessia, apparently.'

'I know some people at Reanne's party offices,' Ryn said. 'Apparently the old monster was gloating for hours after she was done with you. I figured you might be a bit down, so as soon as I heard I got on the next train over here.'

Nass blinked. 'You know, you could well have been on the same one I was on! I only got back here about ten minutes ago.'

'The 16.21?' Ryn looked surprised. 'Wow, beat that for a shocking non-coincidence! We must have just missed each other at the station.'

'At both of them,' Nass said. 'Hey, don't you have teaching today?'

Ryn shook her head. 'The lecture got cancelled. Apparently there's a stomach bug going round, and half the students are busy puking their guts up. That's this century's children for you! It took more than a mere stomach bug to stop us, I'll tell you!'

'Yeah,' Nass said, 'I seem to recall in your case the "stomach bugs" were mainly hangovers.' She glanced meaningfully at the bottle. Down below them, the waves hissed at the shoreline.

'Hey,' Ryn said, 'if you're going to skip lectures you might as well do it for a good reason!'

'So,' Nass said, 'you've heard about my little failure earlier.'

'Yes,' Ryn said. She leaned forward. Somewhere overhead, a bird cawed. 'But there's more, isn't there?' She tapped one of her feet expectantly on the floor.

Nass sighed and nodded. 'Oh yes. The goddesses of academia weren't done giving me kicks in the teeth, apparently. I had a run-in with Chianis.'

'Oh Goddess, not that tired old hag!'

Nass almost choked on her wine. When she was done spluttering she leaned back in her chair, snorting a short laugh.

'Sorry,' Ryn said. 'Didn't mean to make you inhale your booze. But yeah, frankly, Chianis is a hag. I've met that woman three times and each time I wanted to wash my brain out afterwards. You know, just in case anything she'd said had taken up residence inside my skull.'

'Yes, I had a run-in with Professor Haggly herself,' Nass said. Quickly she recounted the details of the encounter.

Ryn shook her head, face turning grim. 'Not good,' she said. 'Basically, Nass, that bitch has got it in for you. And she wanted you to know.'

'But why?' Nass said, feeling angry. There was a loud hiss of spray from below the cliff. 'What have I ever done to her?'

'Last in, first out, I reckon,' Ryn said. 'You're the most recent hire over at Physics, aren't you? And a lot of people aren't too keen on the work you're doing.'

'Cross-disciplinary research,' Nass said. 'I'm stood where particle physics meets astronomy. Or I would be, if I could just get a fucking grant.'

'It's the eezo, isn't it?' Ryn said, a perceptive glint in her eyes. 'They don't see why you care.'

Nass sighed. The wind moaned gently over the balcony. 'No,' she said, 'they don't.'

'It doesn't fit well with their categories and their idea of how things should work,' Ryn said.

Nass nodded. 'That's true. But damn it, there are so many interesting things about eezo! It's not on the other planets, it's not in the sun. But it's here on Thessia! Fucking tons of it! Where did it come from?'

'What about other stars?' Ryn asked.

Nass shrugged. 'As far as I know, there are no spectroscopic detections. Oh - wait - there was that paper a few years ago, where the University of Serrice team thought they spotted some eezo features in a supernova's spectrum. But that paper had issues - their data reduction was a mess! - so it was hard to be sure if they actually did. Plus the supernova was extragalactic, so the signal was poor. And that never helps.'

Ryn shook her head. 'It always creeps me a bit,' she said. 'You talk about looking for chemical elements in exploding stars in other galaxies. And you're so blasé about it! Like there's nothing weird about looking for fucked-up stuff in an exploding star. Particularly one that's far enough that the light took a few thousand lifetimes to get here!'

'Supernovae are bright,' Nass said earnestly. 'You can see them over long distances. And anyway eezo isn't really a chemical, exactly, it's more like a-'

'Nass?'

'Yes?'

'You're missing the point.' Waves hissed on the shoreline below them. Ryn reached for the bottle and poured herself a refill of the Amathean wine. 'People find this stuff weird. And they can find it a little threatening.'

Nass scowled. 'But why? There's nothing in my work that can hurt anyone! I want to look at ice-rocks in the sky, for fuck's sake! They're billions of miles away. It's not like I'm playing with bombs or anything.'

'But who knows?' Ryn said. 'Or at least, that's what your critics will be thinking. Who knows where this could go?'

'But eezo's important,' Nass said. 'It seems to be unique to Thessia. So far as we know, so is life. What if the two are related somehow? Eezo's everywhere here. It's even in our nervous systems, did you know that? If it is unique to this planet - maybe we need to know why. Why out of all the rocks spinning through the heavens is this one special?'

She was, she noted, covering some of the same ground as she had with Kia earlier.

'To us,' Ryn said, 'weird means exciting. But that's because we're scientists. Your perspective - and mine! - they're not the same as most other people.' She sipped her wine. 'Mmm, this is nice!'

'Ryn, I get the feeling you're trying to go somewhere with this,' Nass said. 'And let me just pre-empt something - if you're about to try and tell me that my work is worthless, please don't bother. I've had as much as I can handle of that for one day.'

Ryn looked alarmed. She put her hands up defensively, sloshing the wine in her glass in the process. 'Goddess, no! Nass, I'm a scientist too! For what it's worth, I understand how you feel.' She lowered her hands and took another long sip of her wine.

'Well no-one else does,' Nass sighed. 'And it's not like I can do what most other people would right now.'

Ryn nodded sympathetically. 'It must be difficult, having lost your parents so young. I wish I could say I understand how you feel, but of course there I don't.'

Nass looked out toward the sea. She said, 'In this situation, most of everyone else would just go back home for a decade or so. Wait for the dust to settle on the tanked career, then start again somewhere else. I mean, I'm only ninety-two. It's not like I'm really _expected_ to be living and working independently, you know? But of course ... they're gone. That stupid car crash on that stupid road.'

'How long ago was it now?' Ryn asked. She already knew the answer, of course, and her knowledge showed in her eyes. Sometimes people needed to be allowed to speak, though, whatever else the audience might know.

Down below, the waves roared against the cliff.

Still staring off into the distance, Nass said, 'Fifty-three years ago. I wasn't even forty when I lost them. Not even forty. Really, what the hell am I supposed to do with myself? I've got the house and I've got the memories, but what else?'

'I'd say you've done pretty well, all considered.'

'Pretty well?' Nass snorted. Bitterness gleamed in her eyes. 'My papers are all stalled because the co-authors hate each other and just want to pursue old feuds. My boss wants me gone. Everyone thinks my specialism's a dead end. Except for one single too-enthusiastic grad student, who's bound to go all cynical and jaded on us any day now. No-one will give me the time of day and I get the feeling I've made half the powerful people in the city hate me. Ryn, I'm not even a hundred and I've already failed!'

'Today's one of the bad days, isn't it?' Ryn said gently.

Unable to say anything else, Nass just nodded. Try as she might to stop it, she realised that there was moisture building in the corners of her eyes.

'Try imagining Matriarch Reanne naked,' Ryn said.

Nass choked on her wine.

When the coughing fit subsided, she said, 'Ryn, that's a _horrible_ mental image!'

'True,' Ryn agreed, 'But you're feeling better, aren't you?'

Reluctantly, Nass had to admit that she did feel somewhat better. She took a deep breath and leaned back in the chair. It creaked under her. Ryn's brand of humour was darkly anarchic, but it was also effective. 'Ryn,' she said, 'I just wish I understood any of this. I mean, I get - more or less - why Reanne wasn't interested. Speculative research, a leap in the dark, possibility of failure, no obvious monetary payoff, that sort of thing. But why did she have to be so, so nasty about it? And Chianis too - why has she got my back staked out for a bureaucratic knifing?'

Ryn nodded. 'I do have an idea, actually. You're in a funny place, Nass. Your research has run against the point where the scientific process collides with the democratic one.'

'I don't follow.'

Ryn was silent for a moment. Then she put down her glass back onto the table and she stood up. She walked over to the balcony and leaned on it, looking out. 'People tend to listen to the matriarchs,' she said. 'There's something reassuring in knowing that suggestions are, you know, backed up by all those years of experience. I suppose it's the assumption that if someone survived that long, they must be doing something right. It's why they tend to end up at the centre of political, social and religious movements. Not just here and now, I mean, but all throughout our history.' She breathed out slowly. 'And in the past they've been mighty. Perhaps not so much now - I don't think their power is as strong as it was, say, two lifetimes ago. And certainly not as strong as it was five lifetimes ago.'

'You said something about democracy,' Nass said, frowning. 'Where does that come into this? That's what we have now, isn't it, I mean instead of how people did things in the old days.'

'Hmm,' Ryn said, looking pensive. 'But do we have a democracy, though? I mean, really?'

'What do you mean by that? The votes in the city parliament seem pretty convincing to me.'

'But look at the dynamics of those votes,' Ryn said. 'They generally consist of people picking between which matriarch's ideas they like. At best. It's pretty rare for a proposal to get accepted from anyone else. And then of course you have the times when the matriarchs all close ranks. What do the people get to do then? They can vote yes to a known quantity, or vote no and have who knows what happen. So people tend to vote yes. Sometimes it looks more like birds flocking or grazers herding than the ideal of free choice.' She poked at the top of the wall with a digit. She idly crumbled some dust between her fingers. 'There does seem to be a herd instinct centred on the matriarchs. More than anecdotal, I mean. It's not just this city - it's all of them where you see stuff like this. It does make you wonder - what causes this?'

'Where does my situation come into this? I mean, aside from meeting various matriarchs.'

Ryn hit Nass with a penetrating look. 'Nass, you could have told Reanne to go to hell.'

'But I - what?'

'Seriously, why not? She wasn't going to help you. She'd flamed you off already. Why not just tell her to go and fuck herself?'

'I - uh - well - but I _couldn't_!' Nass realised she was floundering. The wind tickled her face and the tang of sea salt was prominent in the air.

'Or for that matter Chianis.'

'Oh come on! Telling your boss to piss off just isn't clever.'

'But she told you - almost in as many words! - that you're stuffed. Nass, she wouldn't give you a talk like that if she thought there was any chance of you keeping that job. Really, you had nothing to lose. It wouldn't have made her hate you any less. So - why didn't you?'

'I - I -' Nass waved her arms in frustration. Ryn's questioning left her feeling oddly defensive, as if she didn't have a good answer with which to account for her own feelings. 'Look, Ryn, thanks for the lecture, but I've had a fucking shit day. Right now, I don't know how I feel, let alone have a rationale for everything that's going on in my head! And if this is supposed to clear everything up for me...' Nass shook her head. 'Sorry. I feel more lost than ever.'

Ryn nodded. 'Feeling lost. Nass, that's the key to it. Don't you see?'

'No.'

Ryn pulled a face. 'I suppose not. Look, try for a minute to imagine how someone like Reanne must feel right now. She's something like nine hundred and eighty, I think. Pretty ancient by any reasonable standards. She was alive centuries before the Industrial Revolution. Centuries before electricity. And the better part of a millennium before the Processor Age. Imagine the sort of world she expected to grow old into - if she managed to live a whole lifetime. Between disease and violence, a lot of people didn't back then. Matriarchs were rare - that was partly why they were so powerful!

'So maybe when she was a maiden, she thought she'd be the head of her little village in a few centuries' time. She'd oversee the water mill and the crop rotations in the fields, and she'd tell people what to do when there was a plague or a fire. She knew her place and she knew her context. In a way, it was secure. Not physically, I mean - life was short and dangerous. But perhaps it was secure emotionally. There wasn't much change to worry about. Not much major existential change, anyway.

'But then, suddenly, something odd happens. Everything starts changing. Steam-driven pumps - mineshafts going deeper and deeper without flooding! More ores, more metal, more coal. More heat and light for people to play with. Then gas and electricity. Antimicrobials - drugs that work! Think about that for a minute - drugs that actually work! Imagine the revolution that little factoid was in of itself. Oh and railways and self-propelled carriages and now there's aircraft and spacecraft too. Not even the sky is immune to our tampering!

'But that's not the end of it. With all the practical stuff, there's the philosophical changes too. In Reanne's youth, the heavens turned on crystal spheres and the will of the Goddess. Parnitha rose and set because it circled the world, according to the divine plan. But then suddenly, you lot, you astronomers go all heliocentric on us. You blindside us with your theories of gravity and vacuum and planets and hey, Parnitha's a star too! And the sky's full of them, and there's this freakish thing called a galaxy and we live in it. And there's not necessarily any Goddess anywhere and certainly no crystal spheres. Oh, and the Universe came out of a fuck-off huge bang nearly fourteen million lifetimes ago.

'You take her whole idea of how the world is and how it works and - well, you don't really demolish it. You surround it with high explosive and blow the fucking thing to dust, and you leave Reanne and her ilk coughing and blinking in the smoke.'

'You almost sound angry,' Nass said.

'I suspect,' Ryn said, 'on some level Reanne and her type probably are. Angry, I mean. And feeling a bit lost - so very, very lost. They've found themselves pitched into a world that's completely alien, compared to the place they grew up. It's no wonder they might be a bit hostile to it sometimes.

'And then of course you walk into her office, all bright eyed and bouncy, and you've got your plans for more of this disruptive science stuff. And worst of all, she can see that you love this stuff - you don't think it's weird, you think it's wonderful! For what it's worth, I agree, but - you can see, can't you, why someone like Reanne might react rather badly?'

Below them, the sea worried at the cliff and its rocks. Water hissed and splashed. The wind sighed around them, carrying on its breath the tang of salt. Nass frowned and sighed. 'When you put it like that,' she admitted sadly, 'I think I do see your point.'

Ryn nodded. This was one of the longest serious episodes Nass had ever seen Ryn have, Nass noted. Ryn hadn't said anything daft for nearly five entire minutes. Nass realised that her friend was seriously trying to convey something here.

'But,' Nass said, 'I don't see how this helps me.'

Ryn shrugged. 'Being brutally honest, Nass, not all problems have solutions. What's happened to you isn't your fault - you've been caught up in forces far beyond your control. But, better or worse, those forces have you now.'

'Now that's depressing. Perhaps we should go back to talking about my dead parents for added cheeriness.'

'Like it or loathe them, the matriarchs have a lot of influence over the democratic process. Maybe not control, not outright anyway, but good luck going up against them...'

'I could just go to the city, you know, on one of the public meetings, and ask for money directly.'

'You could do that,' Ryn agreed. 'It's within your legal rights to speak in any open parliament. That's basically Article Three of the Armali Charter. But Article Three doesn't require the city to say yes to everything, does it? And would they? Particularly if a lot of the matriarchs have already said no to you.'

'But - you're saying they'd stop me? Why?'

'Politics, Nass, politics. You've spoken to all of them and they said no. And then you go to the city directly - they'd read that as a challenge. To their power. They'd see it as you going over their heads. And they couldn't possibly be seen taken down by some young girl of barely ninety!'

'That sucks.'

Ryn shrugged. 'I agree, but it's how the world works. This one, anyway. Basically, I'd advise against going to the city. There's a good chance the matriarchs might organise against you. And the public grilling you'd get ... it wouldn't be much fun. Plus it might give Chianis some ammunition. If it went really badly, she might claim you'd damaged the University's reputation. And I seem to recall that our contracts of employment say something about "not materially or morally damaging the Institution's standing in the eyes of the People", don't they?'

'They also say something about academic freedom.'

'Yes, but protecting the money-flow comes first.'

'You're a cynic.'

'Yes. I'm also a realist. Point is, if you did that, Chianis wouldn't boot you in two months' time. She'd boot you tomorrow. And that's not better.'

Nass sighed. 'So what do you suggest I do? Put up the flag of surrender? Go to Chianis and beg? Abandon all my research for whatever crumb of work she'll throw me?'

'No - absolutely not! You mustn't do that. Under no circumstances should you even think about that! Frankly, that'd be worse than going to the city. If you do that, Chianis will know exactly what that white flag signals. And she'll milk it - she'll make your life a complete misery! She'll drop your pay grade to the minimum, she'll keep you stringing along on short-term contracts, she'll hand you all the nasty work and publish all the good stuff under her name - no! You mustn't do that!' Ryn shuddered. 'Frankly, walking away is a better option. It doesn't seem like it now, but there are other jobs. Programming in industry, maybe. You have years of scientific coding experience - you know one end of a processor terminal from the other!'

'You're probably right.' Nass scowled. 'By the Goddess, this is a mess! I just - I just feel like I want to be somewhere else, you know?'

A speculative look entered Ryn's eyes. 'Actually, I do have one idea.' She reached for the bottle and poured herself a refill. 'Hmm,' she said. 'We're almost out of wine.'

Nass stared. They'd got through almost all of the Amathean '68. There was only a small pool left at the bottom of the bottle.

'I think it's your turn,' Ryn said. She poured the remaining wine into Nass's glass. The liquid splashed and tinkled loudly on the glass. Ryn returned the bottle to the table. It settled down with a clink.

'This ... suggestion,' Nass said. 'What exactly would it be?'

'I think,' Ryn said, 'you need some time away from that nest of animals. Next week I'm going away on a dig. Perhaps you should come with us.'

Nass blinked. 'But - I'm not an archaeologist.'

Ryn shrugged. 'I'm sure you could find your way around a trowel. And we could always use more people who know their way around processors. And are used to high-level scientific software packages. We mostly take undergrads as the staff on the digs, and a lot of them aren't.'

'But - money! Travel and stuff. If I'm about to lose my job, I need to be saving.'

'My department has an expenses fund. Your travel can be covered out of that. The flights won't be first-class and the hotels won't be luxury, but it'll be okay. You won't lose out from it.'

Nass frowned. 'I have other responsibilities. Like Kia - Kiara. The grad student I'm second supervisor to.'

Ryn shrugged. 'You just answered that one yourself. _Second_ supervisor. This Kiara has a first one, doesn't she? Anyway, whatever happens, Kiara'll be losing you in a couple of months anyway. What's a few more weeks now?'

She had a point, Nass had to acknowledge. She chewed on her lip, feeling torn. On the one hand she wanted to go, but on the other... But then, she was only Kia's second supervisor. Perhaps Delana should start pulling her weight a bit more. And anyway, having supervisors vanish on you with no warning was a pretty typical postgraduate experience - unlike some researchers Nass could think of, at least she'd make a point of telling Kia before she went on the dig.

_If_ she left. If.

Nass said, 'Do you even have space? I thought these digs were popular.'

'Not this one.' Ryn shook her head. 'I'll be honest - there are a couple of downsides to this. It's the Mount Protheos expedition. You know, the one I've been ranting about for the past two years.'

Nass blinked. 'That's a go?' She had heard a lot about this proposed expedition. Ryn had been trying to organise it for a long time and had run into problem after problem. Nass had got the impression that the dig was for Ryn what the papers had become for her - an intractable mess. Apparently, though, Ryn had found a way through the maze. 'I thought you were having trouble getting access to the land. The Church of Athame and all of that. I thought you said they didn't like any of it.'

Ryn nodded. 'Yeah, we have been having trouble. For the last two years. Mount Protheos is one of the Athamists' sacred sites - where the Goddess came down to Thessia, supposedly. They didn't like the idea of us secular academics poking and prodding all over it. But we talked them round. Emphasised their place in the grand sweep of history - and all the free publicity our work will bring them!' Ryn snorted. 'Nothing like a nice fat implicit bribe to oil the wheels, you know? Anyway they finally folded. They've allowed us six weeks in and around Teleanis Chasma. And we're allowed to do proper excavations, too. It's never been properly investigated before, but T'Carnais said she definitely saw pottery fragments. She said there were inscriptions in Linear 6 on them when she was there! Imagine that - Linear 6! If she was actually right about that, why, it'd be the find of the century!'

Nass had no idea whom Dr. T'Carnais had been, or even if the woman had been a doctor, and Nass also had no idea what Linear 6 was, except that its name seemed to imply it was an ancient language of some sort. She resorted to smiling and nodding.

It appeared to be the right response; Ryn beamed. 'So as you can imagine, we're pretty excited. An actual, primary source for Linear 6! For me that's kind of what I guess finding an eezo spectrum in space would be for you. We only know about Linear 6 from secondhand sources and a few fourteenth-era inscriptions. By the time they were made, the Protheos cultures were long gone.'

'How do you know it is Linear 6, then?'

Ryn's smile was broad. 'We don't! And that's why it's fun.'

A further problem occurred to Nass. 'But Ryn,' she said, 'six weeks? I only have three days' holiday entitlement left, you know?'

A sinking feeling of disappointment settled into her gut. Nass had been somewhat attracted by the idea of a journey somewhere else, she had to admit.

Ryn shrugged. 'Give Chianis a call and tell her you're taking a research trip. If my guess is correct, she may actually be a little helpful - remember, she wants to see the back of you too. She'll piss and moan a bit, for form's sake, but I reckon she'll sign off on it. She gets you out of her face for a few weeks. You get out of the madhouse. Better yet, you get out of the madhouse on someone else's expenses!'

Nass was silent. Then she said, 'What's the catch?'

'The stuff you'll be doing,' Ryn said, 'and I'll be honest, will be pretty boring. It's the sort of things we can palm off on a non-specialist - no offence! But, it will be a change of scene. It'll give you a chance to think things over, along with a bit of fresh air. And hopefully a social environment that's a bit better than how things are now.' Ryn looked critically at their surroundings. 'Don't get me wrong, this is a lovely house, but I don't like the idea of you sitting here on your own, stewing.'

Nass was quiet for what seemed like a long time. Then, with some reluctance, she said, 'I think you've won me over.'

'Excellent!' Ryn beamed. 'Don't worry, the eezo won't miss you.'

Nass said nothing but stared out to sea with a quiet intensity in her eyes. Overhead, birds circled and cawed and the wind moaned slowly around them.


End file.
